He has ridden a tiger, and knows the tiger he rides
A powerful essay by Matthew Parris in the Spectator about feeling, for the first time in his life, ashamed to be British.
I’ve sometimes regretted what we do but never hated what we are. Foibles, yes; miscalculations, yes; selfishness and silliness — well, which of us is immune?
But these last few months I’ve seen a Britain, specifically an England, that I simply do not like. I’ve seen a nasty side, and seen colleagues and friends pander to it in a way I never thought they would. It has made me feel lonely in my own country, and the experience has touched me irreparably.
The reliance of the leaders and opinion leaders of the Leave campaign upon resentment of foreigners, dislike of immigration and — in many cases — hatred of immigrants, has been absolutely disgraceful. It should be a stain upon our conscience.
I’ve been feeling the same thing, from a distance. I’m not used to seeing Britain this way, and it feels horribly sad.
On the day of the result he was near Parliament watching people do a CNN interview.
In front of the camera I saw two people shouting at each other and sensed the argument was out of control. Next up for interview, I sat down to watch. The interviewer was Christiane Amanpour, her interviewee the MEP Daniel Hannan.
I have never seen so violent an argument on TV. Nobody won but both lost their tempers. Amanpour accused Hannan of trying to win the Leave campaign by inciting hatred of immigrants; Hannan insisted he had never done so, had never even argued against immigration, but simply for Britain to ‘take back control’. Shouting, he challenged Amanpour to cite any example of anti-immigrant language he had ever used.
I’m sure the record will bear Daniel out. I doubt he’s a racist or wants sharp reductions in immigration. He will have been fastidious in his language. But his rage was instructive. Beneath the furious denials and the angry demands for chapter and verse was the rage of a man in acute personal discomfort about the company he has kept and the currents in society whose cause it has become his lifetime’s work to champion, while carefully disavowing what drives them. Amanpour hardly landed a blow on Hannan because she did not put the most wounding charge: that he has ridden a tiger, and knows the tiger he rides. He — and I use him only as an eloquent example — raises his hands in repudiation of the destination he hears his followers bawl for, yet offers to take them halfway there. He has only argued (as he shouted at Amanpour) for people to ‘take back control’.
That. I’ve seen some people I know doing that, and it has shocked me to the core.
I once asked Enoch Powell whether, no racist himself, he ever felt squeamish about some who cheered his speeches. He replied — to laughter from our audience — that in politics you take support from wherever it comes. The reply diminished him.
Over the last few months a poison has been seeping through our national life. My faith in my fellow English, in our democracy, and in those who serve it in high places led me wholly to underestimate its potency or its capacity to spread.
‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Brexiteers have crowed to me: ‘You’re out of touch.’ They are right. I was. I did not know my own country. I do now. And I like it a little bit less.
Trump is doing us the same service. I feel very alienated from a country where Donald Trump is so popular.
I had a friend from Ghana once; he was very well educated – an engineer. He told me that England was more racist than America; I didn’t believe him. He said if he was driving in England in his Honda Accord, he would be frequently stopped and questioned, because the assumption was that he couldn’t have bought it, because as a man of color, how could he possibly afford such an expensive car? He said that had never happened to him since he came to America. I found that hard to believe, especially since we were in Oklahoma at the time, but my own experiences suggest that the cops here often look at the car itself, and may not notice the person inside unless they stop the car. I got pulled over a lot when I had an old beat up Ford, and cops suspected I might be a drug dealer – until they pulled me over on some pretense and found a middle aged white woman. They would then let me go with some excuse, and a sort of a patronizing don’t do it again (I hadn’t been “doing it” in the first place, unless by “it” they meant driving the wrong sort of car). That has never happened to me since I got rid of that car and have driven much more middle class cars…other than the time I got pulled over in a small town by an officer who appeared to be disturbed by my Darwin fish and my rather free-spirited manner of dress (I admit, I probably did look like a hippie to small town cops that day, but my look was probably closer to Goth, since I was wearing all black).
I now don’t find it so hard to believe my friend about England, though I must admit it’s very disheartening to think that there is no place one can get away from this sick attitude.
I want to avoid any discussions as to whether one country is more racist than another.
Based on conversations with people who had visited the UK and British immigrants, I’ve always thought that there was an element of hypocrisy in Britain in regard to race, the Left in that country have been very ready to assume the moral high ground. Racism is always far worse somewhere else, particularly in their favourite targets, the US and Australia. Now their very dirty linen has finally been laundered in public and they’re shocked and humiliated.
It dimished him, and betrayed him, in that he inadvertantly admitted that the primary reason behind advocacy of X (in this case, Leave) is not the merits of X, but the votes it garners. Self aggradnisement is the mentality of the venal career politician.
As with many articles of this nature, the real story is in the combox.
An example:
Was Matthew Parris concerned that the Remain camp had Sinn Fein-IRA and Anjem Choudry on his side, and basically anyone who hated England, the UK and ideas of Britishness? Evidently not.
We haven’t seen the level of Mr Pariss’ lamentations since the sack of Rome in 410 AD. On and on and on goes the Monumental Moan of the British Bellyache.
His article is simply a statement about how much out of touch he is with ordinary Britain. He cannot fess up to the fact that the pro EU crowd are basically incompetent. He’s unaware of how much displacement and dislocation is taking place because of what has now become an almost uncontrollable level of immigration. And the fact he puts it all down to xenophobia and racism means he doesn’t care to make the effort to understand what’s going on.
It’s about taking back control. It’s about giving the boot to an authoritarian, top-down decision making process that excludes and derides the views, opinions and wishes of ordinary people. It’s. About. Democracy.
The UK’s brexit vote is more akin to the rise of Solidarity in Poland in the early 80s. This is going to spread to other EU countries such as France, Holland and Austria, and so what began as a protest vote in the UK may eventually herald the end of the EU.
Apart from the view that Powell wasn’t a racist, this seems to be an accurate report on what is happening. Only last night a shop in Norwich owned by a Romanian was attacked with a petrol bomb or similar while the owner slept upstairs. I’m nearly 70 and have lived in the UK all my life. I have never seen such behaviour so wide spread. To suggest that the leave campaign is akin to Solidarity is absurd. Britain is not the Soviet Union or Communist Poland .
Police report a 42% rise in reported hate crimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/08/police-record-3000-hate-incidents-weeks-around-referendum?CMP=fb_gu
Solidarity? Ridiculous. Offensively ridiculous.